Iowa Science Olympiad competition March 26 at Coe

Rod Pritchard, Director of Marketing and Public Relations(319) 399-8605 or rpritcha@coe.edu

2011-03-08 14:38:46 - General

More than 300 middle and high school students from 18 schools across the state will compete in the 2011 Iowa Science Olympiad on Saturday, March 26 at Coe College. The contests will be held throughout the day in Peterson Hall of Science, Hickok Hall, Eby Fieldhouse, and on the Library Quad. At the end of the competition, an awards ceremony will be held at 4:30 p.m. in Eby Fieldhouse. The public is invited to all of the day’s activities, which will feature competition in math, science and engineering.

Events featured at this year’s Science Olympiad include meteorology, astronomy, robotics, physics, technical problem solving, chemistry, biology, ecology, forensics, GPS studies, fossils, and ornithology. Faculty members from Coe College and Cornell College, along with employees from Rockwell Collins, Schneider Electric and KGAN, will be offering their expertise as they judge various projects and events.

Founded in 1984, Science Olympiad is a national non-profit organization dedicated to improving the quality of K-12 science education, increasing male, female and minority interest in science, creating a technologically literate workforce and providing recognition for outstanding achievement by both students and teachers. The state director for the Iowa Science Olympiad is Susan Noreuil, science teaching associate at Coe College.

The culmination of more than 240 regional and state tournaments is the Science Olympiad National Tournament, held at a different university every year. This year’s national event will be held at the University of Wisconsin – Madison on May 20-21. At that time, the nation's most competitive Science Olympiad 15-member teams will compete in 46 events spanning the sciences, from chemistry, biology and physics to engineering, robotics and astronomy.